Identity Theft Protection: An Interesting Series of Events

I had an interesting series of events last week. Sunday I got an email from a financial company telling me that they had a data breach, and my info was likely stolen. I’ve seen these so many times, I didn’t think much of it. On Monday, we got a voice message from a very pleasant woman saying she was from our cell phone company. There was a problem with the account, and all she needed was our PIN to correct it. We deleted the message. On Tuesday, I received an email from InfoArmor, an identity theft protection company that distributes their product as an employee benefit. I’m a member thanks to our rep, Caroline Stewart.

I’d been sort of “ho hum” about ID theft protection, but I called anyway to see what was up. Turns out, somebody had stolen my Social Security number and tried to buy 7 cell phones, telling a store in CA that he was me. One of the 7 applications had been approved, but no phones had been shipped yet. Apparently the guy was shipping the phones to PA. This didn’t send up any red flag for the cell phone company, by the way.

A guy from InfoArmor spent 45 minutes on the phone with me on Tuesday night, getting things set up with the credit bureaus to flag any additional activity. The guy was great.

I am no longer “ho hum” about ID theft protection.

If you’d like to talk about identity theft protection as a benefit for your employees, give us a call at (866) 724-0008 or click the link below.